Lifeblood-letting

“Listings are the lifeblood of our company. No listings, no eyeballs, no sales.”

You could slap that on the wall of any portal boardroom and watch the nods ripple round the table. In this case, it’s US portal Zillow’s own Chief Industry Development Officer, Errol Samuelson, writing internally in March 2025 – unearthed by Inman News via a court case brought by agency Compass in the States.

Samuelson’s follow-ups are even more revealing. Zillow, he says, must give agents “pause”, deploying a carrot-and-stick to protect its listing supply. “Even a degradation of our listing content will reduce leads and [Premier Agent] revenues. And we can’t sell Showcase for a listing we don’t have.” Translation: without your stock, the portal flywheel stalls. Cue April’s wheeze: “Not on Zillow, never on Zillow”. Miss the 24-hour window and that property’s barred, permanently. The goal? Frighten vendors into arm-twisting their agent to list on Zillow – or sacking them off.

Except it’s misfired. As Mike Del Prete’s analysis shows, Compass’s pre-portal strategy – the very thing that drove Zillow’s ‘listing protection’ clarity – has grown since the diktat. Zillow’s “lifeblood” is clotting. That should set estate agency antennae twitching here. Because what Zillow knows, Rightmove knows: control the listing tap and you control the market narrative; lose it and you lose leverage, leads and lofty pricing power.

So what should UK agents do now?

- Build a listing strategy, not a habit. Decide which properties go where, when. Does every instruction need to feed every paid portal on day one? Or do you craft a ladder: own site and social first, followed by selective portal exposure? Some instructions deserve the theatre of your brand before the bazaar of the portals.

- Audit your portal mix. The second or third paid-for logo on your window may be vanity spend. If it doesn’t deliver incremental, provable vendor value or demonstrably de-risk valuation conversations, it’s a cost centre, not a growth driver. Test a quarter without it. Track MAs, instructions and pipeline. Keep what pays its way.

- Weaponise AI in the top of funnel. Today’s always-free or low-cost AI can create tailored copy, micro-segmented social ads, auto-generated reels and dynamic landing pages that outperform bland portal templates. Use structured data on your own site so AI can surface your listings. Train staff to prompt well; the gains aren’t in the tool, they’re in the workflow.

- Read the ‘updated’ portal small print. Expect accelerated terms: time-limited listing mandates, exclusivity windows, differential pricing if you “delay” and backdoor penalties for withholding stock. If you think “Not on Rightmove, never on Rightmove” is unthinkable, remember: coercion follows saturation. Push back early; collective agent resolve only hardens before the clause is signed.

- Get your “Portal Recovery Plan” written. If fees rise beyond viability – or terms become unacceptable – what’s your 90-day playbook? Messaging for vendors, alternative eyeball routes, free AI portals, social and search budgets, local PR, referral engines, lead qualification. You already do this for power cuts and floods. Commercial risk deserves the same discipline.

CoStar’s consolidation spree and Rightmove’s 2028 £2,500+ ARPA ambitions won’t slow because share prices have sagged. But the US lesson is clear: even giants stumble when a credible supply-side counter strategy appears. UK sellers still conflate “on Rightmove” with “best chance of sale”; your job is to prove sequence beats simultaneity, and brand beats beige.

This isn’t about bravado. It’s about optionality. If you can demonstrate that some homes sell faster, cleaner and for as much – or more – via other channels first, you’ve taken a little of Rightmove’s lifeblood back. Do that repeatedly and 2026 becomes the year you start to negotiate on your terms, not just theirs.